Letter From Birmingham Jail (King)

The Letter from Birmingham Jail is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King Jr during the 1963 Birmingham campaign.

The campaign began April 3, 1963, with coordinated marches and sit-ins against racism and racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.

The nonviolent campaign was coordinated by King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and others.

A circuit judge issued a blanket injunction against the campaign for "parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing."

The leaders of the campaign announced they would disobey the ruling. On April 12, King was roughly arrested along with other marchers, while thousands of African Americans dressed for Good Friday looked on.

While in jail King read the "A Call for Unity", a statement by eight white Alabama clergymen against King and his methods. The clergymen acknowledged that social injustices existed but said the battle against racial segregation should be fought solely in the courts, not the streets. King began to write a response to clergymen's criticisms on the newspaper itself.

*King's Response*

1. King referred to his responsibility as the leader of the SCLC, which had numerous affiliated organizations throughout the South, and says he was invited by the Birmingham affiliate "because injustice is here" with its brutal police, unjust courts, and many "unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches." 2. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere...Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds." 3. If white people successfully rejected his nonviolent activists, this could encourage millions of African Americans to "seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies, a development that will lead inevitably to a frightening racial nightmare."

1. King confirmed that he and his fellow demonstrators were indeed using nonviolent direct action in order to create "constructive" tension intended to compel meaningful negotiation with the white power structure, without which true civil rights could never be achieved. 2. Citing previous failed negotiations, King wrote that the black community was left with "no alternative." 3. "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

1. King said that recent decisions by the SCLC to delay its efforts for tactical reasons showed they were behaving responsibly. 2. King referred to the broader scope of history, when "'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never'" and blacks had already waited long enough. 3. King quoted Chief Justice Earl Warren, who said in 1958 that "justice too long delayed is justice denied." 4. Listing numerous ongoing injustices toward black people, King said, "Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, 'Wait.'" 5. King lamented the "myth concerning time," by which white moderates assumed that progress toward equal rights was inevitable, so assertive activism was unnecessary. King called it a "tragic misconception of time" to assume that its mere passage "will inevitably cure all ills." Progress takes time as well as the "tireless efforts" of dedicated people of good will.

1. King argued that not only was civil disobedience justified in the face of unjust laws, but it was necessary and even patriotic. 2. "I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law." 3. "A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law." 4. Citizens have "not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws," and at the same time "to disobey unjust laws." 5. It is not morally wrong to disobey a law that pertains to one group of people differently than another. 6. Even some just laws, such as permit requirements for public marches, are unjust when used to uphold an unjust system.

1. King first disputes then accepts the label "extreme." Compared to other movements at the time, King finds himself as a moderate. However, in his devotion to his cause, King refers to himself as an extremist, just like Jesus and other great reformers. 2. "So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?" 3. King's discussion of extremism implicitly responded to numerous "moderate" objections to the ongoing movement, such as President Eisenhower's claim that he could not meet with civil rights leaders because doing so would require him to meet with the Ku Klux Klan.

1. Recent public displays of nonviolence by the police were in stark contrast to their typical treatment of black people, and, as public relations, helped "to preserve the evil system of segregation." 2. Not only is it wrong to use immoral means to achieve moral ends, but also "to use moral means to preserve immoral ends." 3. Instead of the police, King praised the nonviolent demonstrators in Birmingham, "for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes."

Because White moderates, including clergymen, posed a challenge comparable to that of white supremacists because "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will."

King asserted that the white church needed to take a principled stand or risk being "dismissed as an irrelevant social club."

King said blacks need to avoid both "the 'do-nothingism' of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist."